I ran across Peter Hodge’s The Strategist a month or so ago while doing some research on CIA/CIT. His entry over the weekend opens up a whole can of worms regarding command and control concepts, trusting subordinates (and superiors) and also making sure that they have the tools including the training and experience to actually do the damn job!! It is so easy these days to talk the talk and be found wanting when it is time to actually get out there and walk the walk.

The Procarta web meeting I had last week really drilled into this issue and the question about whether you want nice safe validation and verification processes or whether actually getting the good OIL rippled across the system now now now is more important. The trouble with this approach is that people in charge need to accept risk and all players need to be able to accept responsibility for their actions – applying doctrine with judgement comes at a price, you know…